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tv   The 11th Hour With Brian Williams  MSNBC  May 4, 2017 11:00pm-12:01am PDT

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they have single payer like every other civilized country on earth, which is pretty much every country on earth. "the 11th hour" starts now. tonight, president trump and speaker ryan take an early victory lap on the house vote to repeal and replace obamacare. also back on capitol hill after yesterday's dramatic hearing, what we are learning about fbi director jim comey's testimony behind closed tours. and still sinking in. donald trump today expressing surprise that he is indeed our president. "the 11th hour" begins now. good evening once again from our headquarters here in new york. i'm nicole wallace. brian has the night off. it is a big night for donald trump, it's been 106 days since he stepped foot in new york city. he was back to deliver a speech
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aboard the uss intrepid, capping a day that marked his first legislative victory with health care. but democrats smell blood in the water. here's a look at how the vote and the victory lap played out today. >> we are moving out of conference. we'll go to the floor. we will have a two vote series where the bill will pass are somewhere around 1:30 today. >> this bill makes some important changes to how americans get quality affordable health insurance. >> tens of thousands of americans will die if this bill passes. that's a fact. >> it guarantees coverage for those with pre-existing illnesses. >> my republican colleagues would like you to believe that they are going to cover preexisting seasons, and that is just not true. >> you vote for this bill, you have walked the plank from moderate to radical. >> end this failed experiment. let's make it easier for people to afford their health insurance. let's give people more choices
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and more control over their care. >> the ayes are 217, the nays are 213. the bill is passed. without objection the motion to reconsider is laid upon the table. ♪ hey hey hey goodbye ♪ >> shame on you! >> shame on you! >> right now the republicans are in the rose garden having a beer party to celebrate one of the biggest transfers of wealth from working families to the richest people in our country. >> make no mistake. this is a repeal and a replace of obamacare. make no mistake about it. make no mistake. coming from a different world, and only being a politician for a short period of time, how am i doing -- am i doing okay? i'm president. hey, i'm president. can you believe it? right? >> i know that our friends over in the senate are eager to get to work.
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they are. >> do you think you might have spiked the ball a little bit too early celebrating. >> in fact we are real excited we were able to get the bill over to senate so they can start helping working families get relief from obamacare. >> the senate will write its own bill. that's the way it works, right? i don't think that the house bill predicts what is in the senate bill. >> read through the final transcripts on what the bill was and then how do we make it better. >> let's bring in tonight's panel in washington. julie pace, white house correspond end for the "associated press." and here with me in new york, msnbc anchor ali velshi. opinion columnist at the washington most cathryn rampel and my date tomorrow on the morning show, steve kornacki. julie, start by telling us how the white house recalibrated after the last failed attempt to get this done to yield this different outcome today. >> i think the big recalibration
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that we saw happen was after the first attempt at health care didn't even make it onto the floor. the president was really willing to walk away. he talked about moving onto tax reform, an issue that he feels personally a bit more passionately about than health care reform. part of this was just getting his head around the idea that this was important to the party and important to his -- to his start as president to go back to the drawing board on health care. and then i think you saw the president to some extent be less heavy handed in public with his dealings with lawmakers. he was really critical of the freedom caucus in the first go-around on health care. you didn't see that from him as much this time. he was working the phones in private. but a lot of this was left to staff at the white house and the lawmakers on capitol hill. and that's a lesson for this white house, that while the president obviously has a bully pulpit, he's got a platform, it isn't always helpful in terms of turning votes.
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>> ali, is that a good sign? i know the $8 billion they put on the table yesterday to bring along some moderates -- i know you think they don't exist but some moderates around these sort of worries about the public outcry of preexisting conditions that brought them along but there are problems with the bill, right? >> huge, i think the people that came along by the $8 billion are going to get hit the hardest by their constituents, because the truth is the most conservative of organizations that have tried to make sense of it -- remember it's not scored yet. so it's hard to make sense of it. >> explain that. they took a vote on a bill. >> the bipartisan congressional office, which happens to be head headed by a republican at the moment, has not evaluated the effect of that bill, financially and the effect on people. we have guessed -- on something that amounts to a sixth of our economy we have taken a guess. >> which is pretty remarkable,
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because the big indictment of obamacare was nancy pelosi about obamacare, saying, let's pass it and read it later. >> that most haven't read. >> the members of congress. >> right. doesn't matter whether we have read it. members of congress haven't. taken $8 billion for these people who have been put into the high risk people. the conservatives have said we are looking at least a $20 billion shortfall. and liberals say it's closer to $100 billion. now there's going to be a big, big shortfall, but it's important to realize -- while donald trump isn't as into the health care as he is into the tax cuts, he needed this in order the make the tax cuts work. otherwise it's too big. >> i want to put up your piece. i think we have it, right? what do big foot and moderate republicans have in common, to be sure, among the general population, moderate republicans are real and plentiful, but not
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on capitol hill -- >> yes, you don't get to call yourself moderate, sensible, rational, reasonable, if you are willing to basically entirely remake 18% of our economy without having a single hearing, without having testimony from experts, without having a cbo score, without each having read the bill. i'm sorry, you forfeit that right. i think it was a fantasy to think that the screwier ideas and opinions of the house freedom caucus were going to be kept in check by the supposed moderate republicans. they don't seem to have stepped up to the plate and to have done their due diligence to make sure that their own constituents, let alone the various other stakeholders who participate in the health care markets, that they will not be harmed by this. >> steve, we spend a lot of time talking about trump's coalition. how do you think his voters are going to be affected by what passed today in the house?
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>> that's interesting. put aside if you think this was good or bad. this is one of those votes, they come along on capitol hill every once in a while where the governing parties really got to twist arms to get it across the finish line. the interesting thing about this one -- the real big deal that was cut to get this through was cut a couple weeks ago was the house freedom caucus. that's where they cut the deal. then it was the establishment, the moderate members who they leaned on, whose arms they trifted trif twisted to get this thing across. if you take the districts that are represented by republicans that hillary clinton won or came within five points of winning these are the most vulnerable republicans in the house. 34 of them fit that description. 23 of them voted yes today, a lot of them voted yes because they had no choice. their party was going to fail -- with complete control of washington, their party was going to fail unless they cut
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-- voted for this deal that was cut for the house freedom caucus. getting a deal with the freedom caucus to get the moderates to walk the plank. >> i don't think donald trump's instincts, i don't think he is all that offended by the substance of obamacare. i think he thought the brand of obamacare was a dead. i think what he said tonight with prime minister turnbull. let's watch. >> it doesn't matter whether you are republican or not in this case. i'm not going to have, if i'm president, people dying in the street because they can't afford a health plan than much less than obamacare, much less, sean, but it is a going to cost something. you are going to have people who can afford anything. people aren't going to be dying on the sidewalks and streets. we will get them something, into the doctors and the hospitals. peep are not going to die, when i make that in a speech in front of all republicans i get standing ovations. i mean, it's crazy. who wants to let that happen, i'm not going to let that happen. >> obviously, that was sean
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hannity, not the prime minister of australia, but that was an even better example of the point i'm making. you could see sean hannity's blood draining from his face as trump all but endorses single payer health care. what does the white house say his ideology is when it comes to health care? >> that's a really great question. i'm not sure white house aides know what the president' ideology on health care is beyond repealing and replacing the current existing law. we saw that in both of these go-arounds on health care that the president is pretty flexible on the details of this. >> is that an understatement? i mean, flexibility, i think speaks to your sort of gripe with the republicans. flexibility is lacking in washington. i think people -- i think it's probably accurate to say he believes in nothing when it comes down to it. that was him with sean hannity in the midst of the republican primary basically saying, i'm not going to let anyone die in
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the streets, and the only way to do that is to cover everyone. >> and that drove them crazy. that's not the principal that's in this bill that came through the house, or whatever legislation that gets through the senate if anything does. but it does leave republicans in this awkward position where they can move forward to some extent on their own without the specific backing of the president on policy. it's a position that i think they are not necessarily unhappy with, but it does leave them with this big uncertainty because you never exactly know where the president is going to fall on specific amendments or specific provisions in this legislation. >> julie is diplomatic because she covers him every day. you don't know where he is going to fall because you're pretty sure he hasn't read it. i mean, isn't that -- >> oh, yeah, i've been interviewing people for weeks, members of congress. and they say things about what it's going to do for people with
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pre-existing conditions. and i asked them about that. they say you will have to get into the details with other people. i say, well you are the ones who vote on this. the fact of the matter is if you listened to donald trump when he talked to sean hannity and he said it other times, as you said, not only is the only way to make sure people don't die on the streets to cover everyone, but if you are a republican and you think government spends too much money and doesn't do it effectively, universal coverage is substantially cheaper than what we do. we spend over $9,000 a person on health care. most developed countries spend under $4,000. >> like australia? >> yeah. >> let's listen to what he had to say about australia and watch bernie sanders react with surprise. >> going to get better. it's a very good bill right now. the premiums are going to come down substantially. the deductibles are going to come down. it's going to be fantastic health care. right now obamacare care is failing. we have a failing health care. i shouldn't say this to our great gentleman and my friend from australia, because you have better health care than we do. >> they have universal. >> i know. >> oh, okay. >> wait a minute, wait a minute,
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chris. >> all right. the president has just said it. that's great. let's take a look at the australian health care system, and let's move -- maybe he wants to take a look at the canadian system. thank you mr. president, let us move to a medicare for all system that does what every other major country on earth does, guarantee health care to all people at a fraction of the cost per capita that we spend. thank you mr. president, we'll quote you on the floor of the senate. >> will paul ryan quote him on the floor of the white house? >> i don't think so. >> what does paul ryan do? >> that's the amazing thing about how this played out. the clips you are playing during the campaign it was about the social safety net. in general. donald trump positioned himself as the anti-paul ryan. on a lot of these. paul ryan's signature thing the path to prosperity, it was to rein in costs for medicare, for
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social security. here is trump saying i'm not touching social security or medicare. >> said he would not touch medicaid. >> what has he done as president? legislatively aligned himself with paul ryan. the great fear of paul ryan, if you get donald trump you are going to get somebody you are at loggerheads with on all these core questions. so far, no. >> my theory is that paul ryan knew how to be paul ryan if hillary clinton had won. i don't think he has any idea how to be paul ryan in the donald trump administration. >> well said. >> when we come back, steve kornacki has heads to the huge big board that we have. back after this. did you know slow internet
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>> i don't think we should pass bills that we haven't read and that we don't know what they cost. would want to see health care reform done but we want to do it right. if you rush this thing through before everybody even knows what it is that's not good democracy that's not doing work for our constituents. what's wrong with going home in august having town hall meetings hearing from our constituents and coming back and reviewing. >> that was paul ryan in 2009. i feel a little mean -- no, i don't. what a difference. steve, i'm going to start with you, you've taken off the jacket, you're at the board. this new health care bill has a lot of hurdles to clear. >> let's show you exactly right there. celebrating like they got it all done today. what they did today, they can check off a box here. they did pass the house. there, on your to-do list, if you are a republican, you you can check that box off. that's the good news. here's the bad news.
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look what else they have to do. now it goes to the senate. look, you are a republican in the senate, you are trying to get it there. the margin of error there is two. you can afford two republican defections. the concerns for republican senators are very different than they are in the house. let's say you need to make a deal to get it through the senate. maybe you need to change the defunding of planned parenthood to bring susan collins around. maybe you need to add more money to the high risk pools to get some of the more vulnerable republicans. whatever you do to change this to get it to pass the senate, guess what. then you gotta reconcile the differences, take what they passed in the house today, take the other version from the senate, they could be very far apart, reconcile the differences. then you go back to the house. let's say it gets more moderate and moves to the middle in the senate. then you might have a revolt from the house freedom caucus. they were okay with what they passed today. what if it's more expensive when
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it comes out of the senate. you have got a revolt on the right. you have got to pass it through the house all over again. if you do that, you have got to pass it through the senate all over again. maybe the changes disappear in the committee. when they reconcile it -- when -- maybe you have trouble in the senate again. only when you get through all these steps can you land it on president trump's desk and then he can sign it and then obamacare is actually repealed and replaced. that's your entire check list. today they checked off the first box. this is still left to be done. and it is a big, big if, if they can get any let alone all of these boxes checked off. >> it is a very, very daunting list. is anyone putting the odds or giving us any timing when they think they can get through all those steps? >> one of the other wild cards here is there is no cbo score, no estimate on the cost getting it through the house. that is probably going to change when you look at the senate. so we say, what will the senate
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respond to here? if you get a cbo score, if you get estimates on cost, estimates on coverage, certainly that would affect the debate in the senate. there may be things they are forced to respond to and forced to make adjustments for. >> tell me what you think the mythical moderates in the senate are going to do with this. >> well, if it looks anything like what it currently does, i hope they will run for the hills. because this is very bad tr their constituents, for a lot of reasons that we haven't even started to talk about, including the fact that it guts pre-existing conditions, guts essential health benefits, essentially the kind of core coverage areas, prescription drugs, maternity services. guts those kinds of things. lifetime limits on spending. lots of those kinds of things that makes lots of senators concerned and could hurt the cbo score. cbo has said that unless the kinds of coverage that we see americans get under this plan meet certain baseline criteria they will not consider those
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people covered. so actually, the numbers could look worse. >> because they will lousy coverage under this, they won't count them. >> people from the reagan administration said to me today people remember who takes something away from their family and children. >> right. >> do you think the democrats had a good day, singing, i won't punish anyone with my singing voice, but we know what they sang on the floor of the house today? was that a good move, classy? >> i think the best thing for democrats to do, fight the good fight on the this one. it would have been more helpful if there was some acknowledgement that obamacare didn't work on the cost side, it didn't work on malpractice reform and tort reform, and there could have been viable alternatives. but this thing got partisan seven years ago.
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>> obamacare is more popular now than it was when obama was president. >> particularly those who found that it was going to disappear and that they actually had something called obamacare. >> it's like the house guest, you miss them when they're gone. i said this when it happened and i maintained, i think it might have been the obama administration's worst handling of anything. they dropped the ball on obamacare the day they announced it. it became the rallies and don't he tread on me and they never got it back to explain we are going to do something very republican, we're going to lower the cost of health care overall in this country and try to get better health care with more insured. it got some of the way down there and they never got credit for doing that. >> julie pace, do you think the white house understands the shifting politics around the country at the grassroots level around health care and obamacare? >> i think they see the town halls happening when some of the republican lawmakers go home, but it hasn't changed the overall calculus, which is that
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trump believes he owes it to those who showed up at his rallies when he was campaigning to end obamacare. he can't ends this year without having completed that promise to his voters. >> thank you julie, thank you steve. coming up, what did james comey have to say behind closed doors on capitol hill today? an update on the russia investigation when we return.
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on september 9, 2010, pg&e learned a tragic lesson we can never forget. this gas pipeline ruptured in san bruno. the explosion and fire killed eight people.
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pg&e was convicted of six felony charges including five violations of the u.s. pipeline safety act and obstructing an ntsb investigation. pg&e was fined, placed under an outside monitor, given five years of probation, and required to perform 10,000 hours of community service. we are deeply sorry. we failed our customers in san bruno. while an apology alone will never be enough, actions can make pg&e safer. and that's why we've replaced hundreds of miles of gas pipeline, adopted new leak detection technology that is one-thousand times more sensitive, and built a state-of-the-art gas operations center. we can never forget what happened in san bruno. that's why we're working every day to make pg&e the safest energy company in the nation. i think the hearing went well. i think it went better than the issue they covered yesterday
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because i had such strong disagreement frankly with the views that dr. comey expressed yesterday in the open hearing. i don't think the choice was between speaking and concealing, i think the choice was between adhering department of justice policy and not talking about the pending investigation in the run -up to an election or not adhering to doj policy. >> that was house intel committee member adam schiff, responding to yesterday's testimony from fbi director jim comey. they heard from comby and nsa director mike rogers today in a closed session. it's been two months exactly since the president of the united states accused his predecessor of wiretapping him. there remains no evidence of trump's claim. joining our conversation is rick stengel.
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thank for being here with us. >> thank you. >> we were talking before we came on the air about something that struck me yesterday, too, and didn't get a lot of pick up in the discussion. it was comey's comment about how russia remains the biggest threat the world over. >> yes, i mean, i thought it was quite an extraordinary statement that didn't get enough attention. they are the most maligned actor on the world stage. not just affecting the united states but nations all around the world. they continue to undermine democracy, undermine democratic liberal organizations like the u.n., like nato. and they're doing it in nefarious ways. they're using organized crimes, they're using troll factories. they are -- all along a continuum they have been using for decades now. comey is aware of their role in
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the world stage. i think it's fair that he talks about it. >> are you worried sort of in your former role, in our former life, are you watching what is happening in france with some alarm, because russia is behind le pen? >> yes. >> they have been operating in france for generations. they were operating in britain for their brexit vote. they are constantly, they are like a person trying to get you to do the wrong thing. they are doing it both overtly and covertly. i'm hoping that the french will do the right thing despite what russia has done. there is a lot of comical stuff that they do that the french see but a lot of stuff they don't see as well. >> julie, what is the white house's best explanation for all the generosity they continue to exude toward vladimir putin? >> they don't really have a great explanation. you see this disconnect, particularly after the syria air strikes between what people like rex tillerson and nikki haley say about vladimir putin and what we were hearing from president trump.
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even after those strikes i was so taken by the fact that trump himself still wasn't being particularly tough on putin. he would talk about russia and how he didn't think it was right that they were continuing to support assad. but he was still fairly friendly when he would talk about putin. and they had this phone call earlier this week where they basically end the door up again on cooperation with syria. even when you have people talking tough about the russian leader from the administration, the line from the white house has continued to be a bit more friendly. and we don't again have a great sense of exactly why beyond that desire by the president to form a better relationship. >> ali, what could this better relationship with putin possibly yield? >> well, we need it, for issues in the middle east in particular. we are not really going in the right direction in dealing with the calming influence we need to have in the middle east. although i think we are talk
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-- talking about the fact that the president has announced a trip there. >> he is on his way. >> on face the nation reacting to the hacking that everybody else in the world seems to understand. the president said unless you catch someone in the act of hacking you don't know if it's russia or china -- he stopped short of making that reference -- >> to the fat person in the basement. >> yes, because people who know very little about hacking, like me, you know you don't have to catch someone in the act. >> they figure out everything i order on amazon, they can figure it all out. >> the important thing that comey said in the conferring with lindsey graham is they are not stopping. this is not going to get better. this was not a one off thing with donald trump. i think it's more important for us to consider than whether or not the trump campaign had something to do with the russians. it's the idea that this is a problem that we and democracies are going to face now forever
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and we better get on that problem. >> the fact that trump has shared so much praise for authoritarian leaders not only in russia, but around the world, but in the philippines that undermines our values. if we are trying to spread american values, human rights, amongst other things, around the world, it doesn't enhance our moral authority first of all, if we are praising these other leaders, and it doesn't necessarily help in terms of cooperation with other allies. they're going to look more skeptically at us. and it undermines the case that we might be making with a putin or others, behind closed doors, or in the open, if we don't call them like we see them. >> how about that, are we undermining relations with other allies by always taking the putin line. >> absolutely. people don't understand it. and rex tillerson gave that speech to the whole state department yesterday where he said sometimes our policy has to be divorced from our values. i mean we haven't said that in decades.
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our values are our policy. and that's one of the things that people like about the united states. we are the rutter of the international system. they want somebody to be guiding that. when we say we're not practicing that anymore. i think it incentivizes dictators to act and say what they want, because they can do so with impunity. >> erdogan in turkey, duterte in the philippines. it's unusual. >> he likes strong men. coming up, donald trump packs his bags and his passport for his first overseas trip. when we come back.
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my first foreign trip as president of the united states will be to saudi arabia, then israel, and then to a place that my cardinals love very much, rome. >> that was donald trump this morning announcing his first trip abroad as president set for
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later this month. i attended a briefing on the trip this morning at the white house, a tridescribed by a senior administration official quo trip designed to reverse america's disengagement with the world. does that sound like a rebuke of the obama foreign policy record? >> as john kerry said over and over we are more engaged with the world now than maybe we have ever been. look at his flight schedule. where he was going. we were talking to everybody. the obama administration was the engagement this idea of diplomacy that we need to talk to people. that we shouldn't be sending missiles to folks, we should be talking to them. >> something about hands and fists, right? >> one of president obama's trips was to cairo, he gave a speech. and open hand to the muslim world. he did not go to israel. >> interestingly at this
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briefing a senior administration official described the ordering of this trip in part to be a trip designed to deliver a message of tolerance. i thought that was an interesting acknowledgment that perhaps they sent a message of intolerance with the muslim ban. >> as much as the relationship between barack obama and netanyahu was not good strategic relations between america and israel remained as strong as ever. military funding remained in place, defense relationships remained in place. even with respect to the iran deal that netanyahu was angry about, the americans and the israelis had remarkable contingency plans if iran so much as even looked in the wrong direction, towards israel. there are some in the diplomatic community -- i don't want to speak about things rick knows about better than i do who said that being in bed with the saudis for 50 years got us cheap oil not a lot of other things. we needed to reengage. in the region.
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so we've been engaged the whole time. it's a bit of a recalibration. donald trump didn't like the iran deal. this is a repudiation. it is a message to iran that we are visiting the two places you hate the most. saudi arabia and israel. >> julie, i heard a lot from the white house, things that i'm sure you hear every day. when they're asked if it's a reset with countries like saudi arabia and israel, their answer s they're looking to reset relations with us. they are excited. they view president trump as someone who can re-engage them. is that what you're hearing, and do you buy it? >> to some extent, when you talk about saudi arabia and israel, i think that is right. certainly netanyahu has made no secret of the fact that he is excited to work with president trump. he sees him as someone who is going to be much more favorable toward israel and netanyahu's agenda than obama was. with the saudis, it's a two-front problem they were having with the obama administration toward the end. one, it was the engagement with iran on the nuclear deal.
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but also it was this feeling -- and this was more broadly felt in the gulf states and in the arab world -- that the obama administration wasn't doing enough on syria. on that front you have seen some of the leaders are pleased with the fact that donald trump came in and launched missiles at the syrian airbase after the chemical weapons attack to them. that's a sign that he is going to be more militaristic when it comes to syria. these are short-term views that both the israelis and the saudis have. we'll see when he actually gets there and has to engage on the issues over a longer term but yeah there is definitely a feeling in both of these countries that donald trump is a leader they are happy to have in the oval office. >> i've heard that too from u.a. and other countries in the regi who welcome someone who is -- you describe. i wonder if you think that this is sort of a pathway for donald trump to reboot his presidency, by stacking up some foreign policy accomplishments.
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by having a well-executed trip abroad. do you think he can erase some of the impressions he's made with a stumbled domestic agenda in the first 100 days? >> potentially for two reasons. one presidents have a lot more power over policy. in that sense, he has some hope to get something done. maybe not in the next month but eventually. beyond that, his whole foreign policy doctrine is somewhat muddled. part of the reason why it was a bit disorienting to hear this language about how we are re-engaging with the rest of the world, is that throughout the campaign trump talked about how we needed to turn inward. he didn't use exactly those words, but basically -- >> they addressed that today. one of the administration officials described how america first is consistent with strengthening these alliances, that it's in america's interests. so i think they're prepared for
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that. i personally think, i'm sure you know a lot of folks, people like general mattis and mcmaster have admirers across the partisan divide. i think it's the administration's opportunity to make a second first impression. >> that's where i was going with this. >> so you didn't have anyone yelling at the break? >> yes, sorry. there was this perception that trump saw himself as an isolationist and the administration has said no, we don't see ourselves that way. this is a chance for him to clarify what the trump doctrine is what role america should have in the rest of the word. coming up, donald trump's first trip to the big apple since he became president. we'll have that after this break.
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[ chanting ] hey, hey, ho, ho, donald trump has got to go! hey, hey, ho, ho, donald trump
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has got to go! hey, hey, ho, ho, donald trump has got to go! >> the sounds of my city. welcome back to "the 11th hour." protesters greeted donald trump on his first return trip here to new york since the day before he was sworn into office. the president was originally scheduled to stop at his penthouse apartment in trump tower, which would have undoubtedly brought much bigger protests to fifth avenue. today sanitation trucks filled with sand lined the street in front of trump tower. but instead, the president went straight from jfk to the event at the intrepid. the night's event celebrated troops who fought in a famous battle. can donald trump ever go home again? >> i have flashbacks to when barack obama took the white house and he talked about how they were going to be back to chicago all the time.
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spending almost every weekend there. they almost never went back in eight years. trump talked about this to friends during the transition that he thought he would be spending more time in new york. he has been spending more time in mar-a-lago. he is going to be at bed minister, his club in new jersey. some of it is pure logistics. when you are president you travel with huge security details. in some ways his private clubs are better to accommodate that. of course you saw those protests. new york is not exactly friendly territory for this president. and he's extremely conscious of protests. >> he is someone who is always aware of the image. what do you make of the smoother interaction with australia? we actually had a diplomatic kerfuffle. >> what happened? >> remember from february, i think we have the sound, president trump blasted the australian prime minister over a refugee agreement. >> he gets in arguments with our allies and praises our adversaries.
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>> were you pleasantly surprised to see tonight's events go well without any altercations all -- with australia, that counts as a good night, right? >> didn't he say the australian health system is better than -- >> i think he talked about it tonight. take a listen. >> they said we had a rough phone call. we really didn't have a rough phone call, did we? everyone was talking about the phone call. the media was saying what do you think about the phone call. you didn't really hang up. we had actually a very nice call, right? now the record is straight. all of those people back there, thank goodness. it's true. we had a very nice phone call. a little testy. got a little bit testy, but that's okay. >> got testy. >> you know i'm canadian, we got in a fight with canada. with australia, it was about refugees. with canada -- >> new axis of evil, canada, mexico and australia. >> we -- canada and the u.s. have been arguing with soft wood
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lumber the wood you build your house with. for hundreds of years. it was an ongoing debate. but it never got anywhere. it's one of those ongoing debates that sits there and it's unof the unresolved things. >> it's always on the list. >> you have to have a list. and we slapped a tariff on canada. i joked that day on tv that after you do that do you go home and kick your puppy? at some point -- these are our staunchest allies, we don't get into those fights. it's weird that donald trump can find testy discussions to have with the prime ministers of canada and australia, but it does now seem that he is learning not to fight with everybody. >> is he learning? >> well he is adapting. i think taking a foreign trip is a good thing. >> did he wait too long? >> i don't think so. no one is going to look back. he has a nato meeting and a g-7 meeting. part of the thing about those places is the bureaucracy and the structure is so strong it's hard to subvert it. i think hopefully he will learn some things there. >> as punishment we are going to make you cover those wall to wall with us.
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>> i hope so. >> all right, up next, can you believe it, donald trump asked, that he is actually our president? show you that after this.
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coming from a different world and only be a politician for a short period of time, how am i doing? am i doing okay? i'm president. can you believe it? >> can you believe it?
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that was donald trump earlier today in the rose garden on day 105. he still sounds a bit surprised to be president. i am, too. trump has been seeming a bit nostalgic lately for his life before the oval office. here he was this morning. >> if i didn't win i guess i would be gone. i would be out enjoying my life, i think. >> are you surprised by how much he has been waxing poetic about his beautiful, wonderful, enjoyable, prepresidential life? >> the thing about trump is that there is not really an inner monologue. there is just the monologue. [ laughter ] [ all speak at once ] >> outside voice. >> you just hear what is in his head come out of his mouth. i think he is probably expressing a feeling that other presidents have had. this job is really hard. there must be days where presidents just think my old
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life was a lot easier than this. with trump he just says it out loud in the rose garden. >> you think obama had days like man, i had it so great, michelle and i? >> definitely. remember he said i can't take a walk. i can't go for a haircut. just the thing that trump said in the rose garden, he was evoking ed koch. ed koch used to say, how am i doing? and the old joke enough about me, let's talk about you. what do you think of me? >> ali, you fell out of your chair. how are you doing? >> two things come to mind. you would know this well from president bush. watching president obama since the presidency is really most people's first taste of how tough it must be because you just see president obama looking like he never wants to get back to anything. >> look at george w. bush, he paints now. like he's become a renaissance
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man, he paints and writes and reads. >> and you know, president bush and president obama, they all sort of knew this was a tough job. interesting thing with president trump is the number of times he brings up some reference to who knew it was so hard. that is number one. number two, remember, he had a very solid relationship with the press before he was president, and he didn't face a ton of criticism. he got headlines but ultimately the press was more friendly to him. >> he was an entertainment guy. >> so i think he thought, you get more of that when you're president. and he didn't. he got probably the same amount of adulation and probably a lot more criticism than he was planning on. and i think it's gotta wear on you, no matter who you are. >> do you think there will come a point where he stops looking around in amazement that this has happened? >> probably not. >> will any of us? will the country? >> i wish things were normal enough that those conditions would exist. it does not feel that way right now. >> what does his staff say? i heard one of his very senior
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advisers say the one thing we know for sure is that anything can change until the last moment with president trump and everything is always on the table because of the flexibility you mentioned earlier in the hour. >> that is really what has made this first 100 and whatever many days we are at so far so chaotic is that he really can change his mind at any point. that's why you have senior staff that tries to spend as much time with him as possible because you want to be in the room to know when he is changing his mind so you can redirect. this is just his style. it was his style in business and as a candidate. so it really shouldn't be a surprise that it is his style in the white house but you know it is funny to see him sometimes in these settings. i interviewed him in the oval office a week or so ago. when you see him in there you do feel the trappings of the presidency. and then he drops kind of a random comment or has one of those inner monologue moments and you realize this is donald trump sitting in the oval office. it is an amazing thing.
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>> i read your transcript twice. i sent it to our producer and i said you have to read the whole thing. when he says do you want a coke i stopped. he is so normal sometimes but then he is not. what is it like covering him day in and day out? >> it is fascinating. when he offered me a coke, it came right at the end of a fairly le fairly lengthy discussion on china and north korea, a fairly substantive discussion, then, do you want a coke? and presses the button and the butler comes in with a coke. it's watching a guy who comes from a totally different world settling into the most establishment job that exists. it's fascinating. >> fascinating indeed. we never run out of things to talk about. >> i had a bar fridge. >> hit the button, i know, freaked you out. ali almost fell off his chair again.
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>> thank you to all of you for staying up so late. that does it for this edition of 11th hour. i'm nicole wallace in for brian williams tonight. have a great evening.

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